Finding Herself
by PixieXW
Summary: Emma overhears a conversation not meant for her ears and it leads her to learn something about herself and realise that everything that makes her is just how it should be. Life shapes people into human beings, without experience we would all be clones. This is a lesson I myself had to learn at one point in my life and I remember it always...


(A/N) So this is a sweet little scene that came to mind and I hope you enjoy it, please comment.

Emma couldn't sleep. She tossed from one side to the other, from her back to her front in the double bed she now shared with Henry. Her feet tangled in the sheet and her cheek could no longer find a cool part of the pillow. She was too hot and too awake for sleep to even have a chance at winning this battle.

She was home, at last, in her own bed with her son. Only a few days ago she'd been in the Enchanted Forest, in the world of fairytales. Which was ridiculous. Of course learning your parents were Snow White and Prince Charming was totally normal. Part of her longed to go back to the world she knew, the world she still found herself calling 'the normal one'. In that world she was alone, jumping from place to place with nobody to turn to and no one to love. In this crazy place with magic and fairy dust and dwarves with pick axes, she had love and a family. She had a Mom and Dad and a son. She had something she'd never had before. She had someone who put her first.

She no longer had to worry about Henry, if anything ever happened to her she knew his grandparents would protect him with their lives and only a year ago she could never have imagined how important that would be in her list of priorities. She had given him away in order to keep him safe, to give him a good life with two doting parents. The same way her parents had given her away.

She'd seen the nursery, seen all the love and work that had gone into it. That had been a world with no machinery, every toy, every plaque had been created lovingly just for her. Emma had felt this love when Mary Margaret had taken the blow for her, each and every time. She had felt the love when her mother told her off, seen the love and fear in her eyes after Mulan had tried to cut down the beanstalk.

Similarly her father had been stabbed and spent twenty eight years in a coma when he had tried desperately to save her. He had been attacked by the Evil Queen's knights just minutes after helping her mother through the birth of her first child. He had risked everything just for Emma to survive. If her parents hadn't done what she had then none of this would have happened.

It was so weird for her, for the girl who'd been abused. The one who had her arm broken by her foster brother. The one who had a home until she was three years old, then another fifteen after then. It didn't make sense that someone could love her when she'd been brought up to not be loved, brought up to get on with things and not complain about anything.

Eventually Emma gave up, with a deep sigh of frustration she swung her feet out the bed, being careful not to disturb the bundle of duvet which contained her son. She decided to give up on sleep for the time being and hunt for something else to do. First on Emma's list was to head down to the kitchen for a drink of something cold.

She had just slipped out the door onto the top floor landing when she heard mumbling from the floor below. Her first instinct was to freeze, imagining burglars raiding their home. Emma tried not to laugh at her own stupidity when she realized the noises, the muffled voices were those of her parents. Emma began to walk down the stairs and get on with her hunt for a drink but curiosity got the better of her. The child in her wanted to know what was being said and so she tiptoed down a few of the iron stairs, just far enough to see past the column which masked the bedroom nook of the apartment.

Emma sat silently on the step and watched. Her parents were curled up together, Mary Margaret was tucked further into the blanket with the quilt tucked under her arm. It took only a moment for Emma to realize they were naked. She didn't quite know how to feel about that. The adult in her was delighted to see Mary Margaret so happy with a man she loved very much but the child in her felt a little odd at the thought of her parents being intimate when they had a twenty eight year old daughter and an eleven year old grandson.

She watched her father lean forward breaching the space between pillows and whisper in her mother's ear. Emma had to listen very closely to hear what he said. His words turned out to be very simple and yet they still created a little spark of joy within Emma. He had said 'I love you' and Mary Margaret had smiled softly in return. Her hand came up from somewhere under the quilt and rubbed over David's inside shoulder. He sighed, falling back down onto his back, allowing Mary Margaret to pull herself up a little more, placing her head against his bare chest. Emma felt shy, and silly for feeling shy. She should have been very familiar with the bare chests of both her parents. If the curse hadn't happened she would have snuggled up to her mom's boobs, pressing her little hands on them when she was lifted up. She should have curled into her Dad's chest when she woke up from nightmares and when she snuck into their bed in the early morning as all kids did at one point in their lives.

Emma smiled when David ran her hand through Mary Margaret's hair then down onto her cheek. Snow lifted her head, rubbing against his chest. They both moved into an awkward position allowing their lips to meet, then again and again. Emma head the soft moaning coming from her mother and was beginning to think better of sitting where she was when they stopped, falling back into conversation.

"I really missed you, you know," David said, going back to stroking her dark hair as she gazed up into his eyes.

"I do know, I missed you too. I'm so sorry you had to go so long without knowing." She replied, leaning up to kiss him yet again. Emma heard the pluck of their lips coming apart, and watched her mother curl up across her father's sternum. The next words to leave her mouth were so muffled in his skin Emma could only presume what she thought she'd heard. It sounded like a defiant 'It won't happen again, I'm not going anywhere without you.'

Emma had wondered, back when she was a little girl, if true love could be real. She'd had abusive foster parents before, she'd had the couples that barely spoke to each other but no one had been like they were in films. As a teenager she had held on to the dream that she would one day have that fairytale love. When they had the health classes on safe sex she had vowed to only sleep with one guy.

Then other thing happened, she'd had to get harder and rough edged. She'd had to sleep rough and go hungry. She had a foster Dad drunkenly fall into her bed and had kicked him where it hurt to try and get him off her. When, sitting in her jail cell, she had learned there was a kid inside her she officially gave up on the idea of true love.

Now, looking down at the pair in bed together, looking at the quilt which was tangled tightly around the duo of bodies, skin on skin, she knew what she had thought was wrong. Despite the fact these guys were from the Enchanted Forest they had something that was valued in every world. She'd been made by that, by the look in their eyes whenever they saw each other, by the ability to always find one and other and by the everlasting faith her parents had.

Her mother continued to slip off her father and lie next to him again.

"I don't ever want to go anywhere without you again, I've only just got you back and I want to keep you here. I want us, you, me, Emma, to be a family again. I was thinking, maybe we need to make it a family. I don't mean now, I mean someday."

Emma understood what Mary Margaret was saying, even if David didn't seem to have worked it out yet. She wanted to have another baby. Something seized in Emma's heart and she felt the panic if past lives come back to her. She was abandoned before because of a baby. One part of her was yelling not to be stupid, these guys were the real deal, you couldn't give away family. The other side, the flight instinct in Emma, was telling her to go, to get away from this situation before she felt forced out by someone else.

"You're thinking about another child?" She was relieved to hear her father also sounded very unenthusiastic.

"I, I don't mean now. Far from now, we aren't ready yet. And neither is Emma." At the sound of her name Emma's interest grew even more. What did it matter whether she was ready or not. She was never going to be ready as far as she was concerned. She was never going to be ready to accept she was a princess, let alone accept herself as the future Queen, as the heir to the throne. She would be twenty nine years plus, above her brother or sister-to-be.

David sighed, slipping further back against his pillow.

"Yes, Emma. It's hard for her, I can't imagine how hard but it must be far harder than anything I've ever known."

"It would be like learning your parents came from the world of television and schools. It would be scary for us, very, very scary." Mary Margaret joined in.

"She was getting better though, when we were away she was strong and flexible. She used her initiative. She has it in her, it is all just under the surface." Emma could hear the frustration in her tone, she felt guilty but at the same time it was weird to hear someone talk about her with so much passion.

"That's the you in her. She won't give way to the feelings she might have, she might know it's all under the surface. She killed a dragon Snow, it's all there but we have to let her find herself in her own time."

"I know, I know. I just think she would be so much happier if she knew it all; if she let the real Emma out of that shell. I feel like it's my fault. She was abused before, David, she suffered so much because we weren't here. We were not there when she needed us to pull her out of her shell." There was a tone in her mother's voice, a tone that sounded like tears were going to fall. She was crying. Mary Margaret was crying over her.

It send a shiver over Emma's skin and she had to rub her arms roughly to avoid shuddering.

"This was her fate. This was all supposed to happen. Your childhood with your mother and Regina, it made you strong and wise to the world around you. It made you see what was right and wrong. If Emma hadn't had that life she would never have become who she was. She wouldn't be Emma, just like you wouldn't be Snow."

The words went straight to Emma's heart. Her father wasn't good with words, she knew that, but he could be when what he said pulsed out of his heart. He could be when his naked wife was curled up next to him, sobbing softly into his neck. Emma knew those words were true, if she had been brought up differently she would've been different. If she hadn't had Henry then she would never have saved her parents. And she did save them. She was who she was, if she wasn't Emma Swan- if she'd been Emma Nolan or Emma Blanchard instead- her son would be dead and her parent's people, her people would be lost forever.


End file.
